[Red Shift's] top tune—the main plot and the easiest to follow—tells of an intelligent, oversensitive teenager, Tom (his wit saves him from being an emotionally spotty bore), who lives in a trailer with his disagreeably possessive mother and weak-willed army pa (overworked stock characters in teenage fiction, but given some vitality and individuality here). Tom is in love with a better-balanced, equally intelligent girl, Jan.… The plot begins with Jan preparing to move to London, and Tom toiling in an emotional panic that reaches a volcanic climax when his parents ask if he and Jan have "had any occasion to do anything to make us ashamed of you."

In order to solve their separation the young lovers arrange to meet regularly on Crewe station, a rail junction which for years has been the butt of vaudeville gags. For a while all is sunshine and flowers—romance...